Professor Mallika Imwong
Contact information
Research groups
Mallika Imwong
Malariologist at Mahidol Department of Molecular Tropical Medicine and Genetics
- Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in Tropical Medicine
My research works have focused on three aspects:
- to understand how drug resistance emerges and spreads in malaria parasites in Asia and Africa
- to detect and characterise the true epidemiology of malaria in low transmissions setting
- to investigate the biology of relapse of benign malaria.
I am currently involved in surveillance studies describing the molecular epidemiology of drug resistance in different parts of the region including Thai-Burmese border, Eastern Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos PDA, and Afghanistan. A key objective is to determine the genetic and mechanistic basis for increased resistance of P. falciparum to artemisinin. The development of an inexpensive and effective genetic tool is essential for public health monitoring for artemisinin resistance. My ongoing projects will use genotyping markers or phenotypic properties for the fitness cost alleviating genetic variants validated loci and conduct follow-up molecular epidemiological surveys to assess their prevalence throughout the GMS in the current state of transmission. Therefore, this will also allow us to assess the potential of the GMS to develop drug resistance phenotypes and to evaluate the potential that such phenotypes emerge in other parts of the malaria world (such as Africa), as control programs progress towards elimination.
Transnational spread of multidrug resistant PfPailin
Malaria elimination
Recent publications
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Primaquine in glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency: an adaptive pharmacometric assessment of ascending dose regimens in healthy volunteers.
Journal article
Pukrittayakamee S. et al, (2024), eLife, 12
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Clinical antiviral efficacy of favipiravir in early COVID-19 (PLATCOV): an open-label, randomised, controlled, adaptive platform trial
Journal article
Luvira V. et al, (2024), BMC Infectious Diseases, 24
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Antiviral efficacy of molnupiravir versus ritonavir-boosted nirmatrelvir in patients with early symptomatic COVID-19 (PLATCOV): an open-label, phase 2, randomised, controlled, adaptive trial
Journal article
Schilling WHK. et al, (2024), The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 24, 36 - 45
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Trio fluorophore-based phenotypic assay for the detection of artemisinin-induced growth-arrested Plasmodium falciparum in human erythrocytes.
Journal article
Kobpornchai P. et al, (2024), Scientific reports, 14
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A novel sensitive hexaplex high-resolution melt assay for identification of five human Plasmodium species plus internal control.
Journal article
Srisutham S. et al, (2023), Acta tropica, 248